Under-fire Phil Mickelson has received support from his former coach as the explosive LIV Golf saga continues to escalate.
'Big Phil' represented one of Greg Norman's first major captures when he joined the Saudi-backed rebel tour ahead of their inaugural event in St Albans in June. However, that was only after he'd taken a prolonged break from the sport having made controversial comments about both Saudi Arabia and the PGA Tour.
Initially, Mickleson accused the status quo of "obnoxious greed" in trying to block players from signing with LIV. However, he then somewhat contradicted that stance when he branded Saudis "scary motherf*****s" and spoke of the country's "horrible record on human rights."
The resentment towards the six-time major champion has been evident, with Tiger Woods publicly condemning the views of his former Ryder Cup teammate. But now Butch Harmon, who worked with both iconic players, has called for the famous 'leftie' to be forgiven.
'Well, Phil's very honest,' Harmon said, on a golf podcast with son Claude. "I mean, he's got no filter. It's one of the things I admire about him, one of the reasons we were friends, because I got a lot of that in myself, too. What we think is what we say.
"You know there's things that have come out about him and his personal life that he hasn't done, and look, hey, we all make mistakes; nobody's perfect, all right. We all make mistakes; there's things in our past that I think bygones should be bygones."
Harmon even suggested that some of Mickleson's views had actually prompted the PGA Tour to make positive change: "And I think, in all honesty, I'm going to give Phil some credit," he continued. "People didn't like it, but a lot of the things he said about the Tour I think were true.
"And I think the Tour is now seeing that and they're trying to change a lot of that stuff. So you got to hand it to Phil for that. He has taken a tremendous amount of criticism for it."
Indeed, the PGA have since looked to increase prize money for competitors. Last week, it was also announced that Woods and Rory McIlroy had put forward proposals for a new golf league to be played virtually inside stadiums, in an apparent bid to attract a new audience and stave off the threat of LIV.
The defectors have been criticised for their argument that the new tour is designed to 'grow the game of golf', rather than admit their moves were financially motivated. And sure enough, Harmon called on them to be honest about their reasoning.
"I think the players that went to the LIV, you're probably not going to agree with me on this, they created the problem because they went for the money, there's no doubt about it. That's 'BS' about I'm going to play less and I'm going to spend more time at home. No, you went for the money. So just say that.
A number of LIV Golfers have out their names to a lawsuit against the PGA Tour, in order to contest their bans. That saga took another twist this week though, when rebels Abraham Ancer, Carlos Ortiz, Pat Perez and Jason Kokrak decided to withdraw their names from the complaint.
